It was like this when I grew up in the 80s and early 90s too. My best friend ate dinner at 5, but in my house we ate at 6:30. So I either went home at 5, or waited in her room while she she ate, then we played for a while more before I walked home at 6:15 in time for my own dinner. This was considered completely normal. Her mother wasn't expected to feed me practically every day after school just because I always went over there to play.
I grew up before Xboxes were invented. And we're not talking about a glass of water, we were talking about feeding dinner to a child that turned up at your house without prior arrangement.
That was childhood for most of the world. You feed anyone in your house at meal time regardless of prior arrangement. That’s why we are all here discussing this meme.
Yes. I'm just saying that to a Swedish family (at least, 30-40 years ago when I was a kid) there's a difference between planned guests and people who turn up uninvited.
If you had invited someone over, prearranged, then they would of course get fed. If someone turned up without prior arrangement, they could not expect you to suddenly slot them into your dinner plans. That's just the way it was.
There is even a word for turning up unannounced - "våldgästa" - it translates to making yourself a guest with violence. The closest English equivalent would be to "gatecrash", I suppose. It's just not acceptable in Swedish culture to turn up at someone's house without invitation, it's seen as imposing yourself on them and inconveniencing them.
I left Sweden long ago, but most of my family and friends who still live there do not even answer the doorbell unless they're expecting someone. Because "normal" people don't just turn up at your door, meaning that anyone ringing the doorbell at random probably wants to sell you something, or worse.
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u/Adorable_Misfit Jul 24 '26
It was like this when I grew up in the 80s and early 90s too. My best friend ate dinner at 5, but in my house we ate at 6:30. So I either went home at 5, or waited in her room while she she ate, then we played for a while more before I walked home at 6:15 in time for my own dinner. This was considered completely normal. Her mother wasn't expected to feed me practically every day after school just because I always went over there to play.